An Islamist party in Pakistan called for the expulsion of the Dutch ambassador on Wednesday as it launched a protest against a far-right Dutch politician’s plan for a cartoon competition featuring caricatures of the Muslim Prophet Mohammed.

Several thousand activists gathered in the eastern city of Lahore for the demonstration organised by Tehreek-e-Labbaik, a party that amassed the fifth largest number of votes in a general election last month having campaigned as a defender of the laws and punishments for crimes of blasphemy.

Party leader Khadim Hussain Rizvi set out from Lahore’s historic centre at the head of a protest he aims to take through the towns of Punjab province to the capital Islamabad, where protesters will stage a sit-in to pressure Pakistan’s new Prime Minister Imran Khan to cut diplomatic ties with the Netherlands.

“The Dutch ambassador should be immediately deported,” Labbaik spokesman Ejaz Ashrafi told Reuters. “We will only stop when the government meets this demand.”

Pakistan has already complained to the Dutch government about far-right parliamentarian Geert Wilders’ plans for a cartoon contest that will upset and provoke Muslims.

Wilders intends to display the cartoons on the walls of his political party’s room in parliament. He says he’s had “hundreds” of entries.

“The Foreign Office called the chargé d’affaires of the Netherlands and issued him a Demarche’ to record a protest,” the Pakistani prime minister’s office said in a statement on Wednesday.

The Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte said last week that the cartoon competition “was not something I would do” and his government was not associated with it.

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said he planned to take up the issue with the United Nations and several world leaders.

“They don’t understand how much they hurt us when they do such acts,” Khan, a cricketer-turned-politician, said on Tuesday, a day after the upper house of parliament condemned the proposed cartoon competition.

Officials from the Punjab provincial government met with Labbaik leaders in Lahore in a vain attempt to persuade them to call off their protest.

“We told them to stop the protests because the Pakistan government is taking up the issue effectively,” an official involved on the talks told Reuters, adding that Labbaik representatives insisted the protest would only end once the Dutch envoy was expelled.

Last year, in a stand-off with the previous government, Labbaik shut down a main highway leading into Islamabad for nearly three weeks over a small change in wording to an electoral law changing a religious oath to a simple declaration. Labbaik said the change amounted to blasphemy.

The ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz was forced to accept the resignation of law minister Zahid Hamid, who Labbaik held responsible for the change, after seven people were killed and nearly 200 wounded in a failed attempt by police to disperse protesters.

Geert Wilders, the Dutch politician leading calls for an EU ban on Muslim immigration, defied prosecutors in his discrimination trial on Friday by repeating in court that he wants “fewer Moroccans” in the Netherlands.

Wilders is accused of inciting hatred and discrimination against the Moroccan minority, in a trial that coincides with heated debate in European Union countries about the million or more people who have poured into the region over the past year fleeing war and poverty. Many Dutch people oppose the influx.

Wilders could face up to a year in prison.

“Why did I speak about fewer Moroccans?” he said. “The honest answer is because I want fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands.”

The case against Wilders, which follows the acquittal in December of his political ally Marine le Pen in France on similar charges, pits freedom of speech against freedom from discrimination.

Wilders says the trial is politically motivated and his comments are protected by his right to free speech.

With his trademark peroxide blond hair, Wilders sat calmly listening to a day of legal arguments before asking judges to acquit him.

“I didn’t say all Moroccans should leave the country, or all Moroccans are no good, but I spoke about fewer Moroccans because that’s what I want and with me millions of Dutch citizens,” he said, repeating that he wants the border closed to all non-Western migrants.

But he added: “I don’t hate anyone and I don’t spread hate. I reject everything that has to do with discrimination.”

Prosecutors say comments Wilders first made during election campaigning in March 2014 crossed the line of what can and cannot be said under Dutch law.

“Freedom of expression is not absolute, it is paired with obligations and responsibilities,” said lead prosecutor Wouter Bos. “Racism and hatred of foreigners constitute a direct violation of the foundations of freedom, democracy and the rule of law.”

In the televised 2014 incident that led to his prosecution, Wilders asked supporters whether they wanted more or fewer Moroccans, triggering the chant: “Fewer! Fewer! Fewer!”, to which a smiling Wilders responded: “We’ll take care of that.”

Prosecutors said his supporters had been coached before the event, significant for their attempt to show that Wilders had intended to incite hatred. Later, Wilders publicly referred to Moroccans, who make up about 2 percent of the population, as “scum”.

LEADING IN POLLS

Wilders and his decade-old Freedom Party have become the most popular party in national opinion polls by a wide margin, with elections expected in March 2017.

He has lived under 24-hour protection since the 2004 murder of writer Theo van Gogh, who – like Wilders – made films criticising Islam.

An earlier discrimination case against him in 2011 centred on his calls for “Muslim criminals” to be stripped of their Dutch nationality and deported, and his comparison of the Koran to Hitler’s manifesto “Mein Kampf”.

Judges concluded then that Wilders’ remarks might have been offensive, but acquitted him because the target was a religion, not a race.

Wilders faces one charge of discrimination and a second of inciting hatred of Moroccans. If convicted, he could go to jail or be fined a maximum of 7,400 euros (5,802.5 pounds).

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